Gulliver, Julia Henrietta

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GULLIVER, Julia Henrietta

Born 30 July 1856, Norwich, Connecticut; died 25 July 1940, Eustis, Florida

Daughter of John P. and Frances W. Curtis Gulliver

A member of the first graduating class of Smith College in 1879, Julia Gulliver received her Ph.D. from Smith in 1888. Two years later she was appointed head of the department of philosophy and biblical literature at Rockford Female Seminary, predecessor of Rockford College, in Rockford, Illinois. In 1892 and 1893, by special permission because she was a woman, she studied under the noted Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig; in 1898 her translation of Part I of his Ethics was published. From 1902 to 1919 she served as president of Rockford College, and during her tenure helped to shape the course of American women's education by creating a curriculum that fused liberal studies with a program of home economics, which Gulliver saw not as limiting women to the home but as enabling them to work for the health and well-being of the entire society.

Gulliver's essay "The Substitutes for Christianity Proposed by Comte and Spencer" (New Englander, 1884) represents some of the work done in fulfillment of her doctorate. In it she defends Christianity against the cosmic theism of Herbert Spencer and the positivism of Auguste Comte by using a test that Spencer himself had proposed, that progress is the change from a lower level of differentiation and integration to a higher one. In Gulliver's view, positivism fails because by finding divinity in the collective existence of humanity it offers a unity without difference. Spencer's cosmic theism, on the other hand, offers difference without unity, since no true union seems possible between the human person and an impersonal unknowable Deity. Christianity alone exhibits the progress Spencer outlines, and it brings to perfection what is good in positivism and cosmism: the love of neighbor and the rejection of anthropomorphism.

Gulliver's commitment to Christian principles characterizes all her writings, and hers was a religion that went far beyond mere piety. Religious maxims often became metaphors of current social issues, as when she applied the notion that "no man liveth unto himself and no man dieth unto himself" to the issue of infectious diseases, and when she expressed hope that some day the work of men and women would be "like the seamless cloak of Jesus." She saw the incarnation as continuing through human action, and exhorted women to take an active role in social reform, since "God himself fails of fulfillment unless you fulfill your destiny." In praising the economic, civic, and legislative advances wrought by American women, she rejoiced at "how grandly…the transcendent God of the 18th and even of the 19th century [has] become the immanent God of the 20th century through these devoted efforts of the women of our country!"

Gulliver's educational philosophy rested on a conviction that the human personality is an organic whole, and that therefore the liberal arts should not be isolated from practical or vocational courses. She felt that the forte of Midwestern women is for executive achievement, and she departed from the practice in eastern women's colleges of emphasizing "cultural subjects" exclusively, believing that women should not so much "be accomplished" as "be able to accomplish."

A number of Gulliver's essays in psychology, philosophy, and literature were published in the New Englander, the Andover Review, the Philosophical Review, and New World.

In her book Studies in Democracy: The Essence of Democracy, the Efficiency of Democracy, American Women's Contribution to Democracy (1917), consisting of three addresses given on various occasions, Gulliver argues democracy is not founded on equality in the sense of uniformity but on the opportunity of each individual to reach his or her full potential; the great democratic ideal is "that everyone should have the chance he is capable of availing himself of." In discussing women's contribution to democracy, Gulliver points out the ways in which women have incarnated the spirit of democracy and shaped the social conscience of America.

Gulliver's most lasting contribution is no doubt her pioneering work in women's education. While insisting that the role of "homemaking" must be reinterpreted to embrace the welfare of the entire society, she at the same time helped provide the means by which women could prepare for such a role. She thus incorporated in herself that which she always advocated, the union of the theoretical and the practical.